Lionel Messi’s international career is not quite finished, but the reckoning has already begun. He will return in a week on Wednesday for a formal farewell in a friendly against Benin. Before that, Argentina play two matches — against Bolivia and Burkina Faso — in which they will begin to experience a future without the most potent get-out-of-jail-free card football has known.
Messi’s time in the national shirt divides into two distinct halves. For the first decade there was a persistent sense that he did not quite fit, that he was somehow insufficiently Argentinian, that he did not care for his country. That is recognisable now as a manifestation of public frustration at a trophy drought endured despite the presence in the forward line of one of the three best players ever to play the game.
Then came 2016, when a distraught Messi retired after missing a penalty in the shootout defeat by Chile in the Copa América final. The prospect of life without him was so appalling that it provoked a mass campaign urging him to reverse the decision. He did, and over the years that followed he was loved — and delivered, with two Copa América titles, a World Cup triumph and another run to a World Cup final, which Argentina lost to Spain. Dogged for years by the accusation that he never matched Diego Maradona’s achievements in a national shirt, he ended up having won more.
This retirement will not be overturned. Messi is 39, and those who persuaded him to change his mind in 2016 were perhaps imagining six more years; they got 10. There will be no second thoughts this time. The rupture is real.
No longer, when things go awry, will Argentina be able to turn to the superhero in their midst. The best illustration came almost at the end, when they trailed Egypt 2-0 with 11 minutes of their World Cup last-16 tie remaining in Atlanta. Barcelona’s youth coaches used to speak of the teenage Messi getting the face on, at which point he became unstoppable. It happened again there: it was as though he simply decided that would not be his last World Cup game. Argentina won without needing extra time.
Optimists will take solace from the fact that Argentina’s best performance under Lionel Scaloni probably came in a 4-1 World Cup qualifying win over Brazil in March 2025, a match Messi did not play. Even allowing for the odd tactical choices of the opposing coach, Dorival Júnior, Argentina were exceptional: Leandro Paredes anchored the midfield as Alexis Mac Allister and Enzo Fernández linked with Rodrigo De Paul and Thiago Almada on the flanks and Julián Álvarez at centre-forward.
But football is not only about the good times. Through the bleak years of doubt under Edgardo Bauza and Jorge Sampaoli, when games spiralled out of control, there was always the possibility that Messi would put things right. Argentina must now confront a future without that potential.
The new cycle begins next week. Scaloni has hinted that he will sign a contract extension taking him through to the 2028 Copa América, with an option to the 2030 World Cup, which would at least provide a measure of stability — just as he instituted a new era after the 2018 World Cup.
Other than Messi and Nicolás Otamendi, who both retire after the Benin valediction, Scaloni has named a 35-man squad. Twenty of them were at the World Cup and, with Paredes and Nahuel Molina serving lengthy bans, that represents a remarkable degree of continuity, although Nicolás Tagliafico, at 34, is also understood to be considering his future. Twelve of the squad had played three internationals or fewer, and De Paul and Giovani Lo Celso, both in their thirties, will feature only against Benin, giving the new cohort space to impress in the first two friendlies.
The biggest short-term opportunities look to be at the back. Cristian Romero and Lisandro Martínez, both 28, appear likely to be the first-choice central defensive pairing, with Valentín Gómez of Real Betis and Tomás Palacios, on loan at Estudiantes from Inter, competing for the back-up roles. With Molina suspended, Tagliafico ageing and Gonzalo Montiel injured, the real interest is at full-back, where two 22-year-olds, Agustín Giay of Palmeiras and Román Vega of Zenit, could stake a claim to be the future.
In Messi’s absence there is also a question of formation. The Brazil game showed what is possible through inter-movement without a huge amount of overt creativity, but Scaloni may opt for more traditional wingers — and there are young options there too, with Leonel Flores of Boca Juniors and Roma’s Matias Soulé likely to make their debuts over the next few days.
Replacing Messi, though, is not possible, either at a tactical level or, perhaps more significantly, in terms of what he meant for the spirit of the team. It is not that Argentina needed him to play well. A purist could even argue they played better in the Brazil match than they ever could have with Messi — or at least the pedestrian Messi of recent times — because of his lack of movement and the way the game had to be built around him.
That is always the danger with individualists, but Messi was so spectacularly consistent that the percentage option was to rely on his extraordinary genius, the true extraordinariness of which was how reliable it was. However well-organised an opposition defence, there was the possibility, even the probability, that he would find an opening; however badly things were going, there was always a chance he would get the face on and sort everything out single-handed.
Plenty of sides have found a new fluency and a more team-based dynamic after a major star has moved on, and Argentina’s ceiling could conceivably rise. But Messi offered a reassurance, a possibility of salvation, that will be sorely missed.